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“Oh, thank you.” I laugh as I take the to-go cup from her.
She smiles. “Divine liquid from the gods.” We tap our cups together and laugh.
I nod in agreement as I sip my steaming hot brew. A knock on the very back door, draws our attention, and we both move to let the delivery truck driver in. We cannot get started without the supplies we bought yesterday at the conglomerate store called Twin-City Hardware, Lumber, Rental, Office Supplies, and Coffee Shop.
The all-inclusive name still makes me giggle. Since the nearest Walmart Supercenter is in Spearfish, I am grateful for the local mom-and-pop store.
“Morning.” The friendly, brown skinned man says with a heavy hispanic accent. He is staring at a clip board in his hands rather than addressing whoever answered the door. We could have been a golden retriever for all he knew. He never looked directly at us.
“Delivery for Aces & Eights Bookkeeping and Accounting Agency…, care… of…” He searches the page. “Cindy Bradshaw?”
“That’s me.” Cindy says cheerfully. “Come with me, I’ll show you where to put everything.”
Her step seems lighter than yesterday when we could not walk into her office side-by-side. There had only been the faintest nature trail to her chair, but now, since we spent a day on the declutter, we could both get behind her desk and to the two guest chairs and move around enough to work with the piles of manilla file folders. Poor Cindy had been meeting with clients in the receptionist area because she did not have anywhere for them to sit in her office.
Today the man has a wide path in which to bring the third filing cabinet and archive boxes. They need to be unwrapped from their plastic bundles, unfolded, and assembled. She and I will put them together and fill them with the files that need to be stored for up to three years.
Honestly, we should be done in time to wash up and go, as planned with the other girls, to Karaoke Night at the Buffalo Bodega, except I wasn’t sure I was going now that I had Jason loitering at my house. I refill my coffee while the Twin-City delivery guy hauls the supplies in. Fatigue swamps my limbs like liquified heavy metal. I’m not real sure there’s enough caffeine in the world to fully revive me after last night’s into-the-morning multi-round match with my ex-fiancé.
“So…” Cindy looks at me over her steamy coffee while we wait for our supplies. “What happened with Jason, last night?”
I roll my eyes and sigh miserably. “He’s such an idiot.”
Cindy smiles empathetically. How can she possibly, truly, understand? She had been married once, and it ended in an amicable split, was there a level of understanding in Cindy’s heart to get what I am going through now that Jason has appeared in Deadwood? Perhaps Cindy is simply gifted in sensing other’s emotions which gave her the ability to empathize with them.
“What happened?” Cindy’s eyes followed the delivery guy on his trip back to his truck for the archive boxes, having placed the filing cabinet where she had showed him.
“Ohhhhh!” I shrug, trying to stall. I want to talk about it, and yet, I would love to forget it ever happened. I know from experience it’s better to tell a good listener about one’s problems. Is Cindy a good listener? Trisha Timberly is a professional therapist, maybe I should wait until we gather for karaoke tonight and bend her ear, get all four of their opinions about this wart-on-my-butt named Jason.
“He told me he was wrong to let me go.” My mouth involuntarily twists up on one side. Repeating his lies tastes like bitter resin on my tongue. My eyes sting with salty tears and lack of sleep. “Herealizesit now, and he wants me back.”
Cindy tilts her head. “Do you believe him?”
“No.” I say too quickly. Do I? I’m not sure. “I don’t know what to believe.” I say, and I mean it. “I loved him for a long time. I wanted to be his wife and grow old and gray-headed together. I wanted children with him, but—”
The delivery man empties his last load from the dolly and hands Cindy the clipboard with a paper to sign. She thanks him and walks with him to the back door. I pour myself another coffee and try to get Jason’s foolish assertions out of my head.
Cindy locks the door and returns to me. “But…?” she prompts me to continue.
I sigh from under the weight of everything I don’t know what to do with. “We have a lot of work to do today. I know you want to go to karaoke night and we’ll both need time to shower and get gussied up.” I try to smile. “We should get started.”
“You’re right.” Cindy manages a smile. “But…” She prompts me with bigger eyes than before.
I grin. I can tell Cindy is indeed a good friend. “You sure you want to hear about this mess I call my life?” I move with her and cut the plastic wrap holding the archive box bundles.
“Only if you want to talk about it. I’m all ears.” Cindy says kindly.
“No. I don’t, really.”
“Okay, let’s just make boxes,” she lifts the lid where the instructions are on the inside portion of the cardboard and reads.
I jerk a nod and get to work. The boxes are easy to unfold, tuck tab A into slot B and form nice thick corrugated cardboard boxes with solid lids. There are preprinted areas to fill in for labeling the boxes before storage. We will do that as we fill them.
Memories of the back-and-forth arguing, crying (on Jason’s part), and begging (also Jason) that continued into the early hours this morning echoes in my mind, overwhelming mythoughts like an overfilled water balloon stretches to its greatest limits before popping. My brain feels just as close to bursting.
“Can you believe, he had the audacity…” I began, and like the small hole in the dam wall that the little boy held his finger in, my wall cracks, leaks, and finally floods in great detail all that had been said between Jason and me.
We assemble boxes, fill them with files, mark them for archive and carry them to the back where several shelves have been reserved for Cindy’s clients’ storage while I regurgitate all that was said last night. We break for lunch at the Buffalo Bodega, and return to organize her three filing cabinets while my guts continues to spill about everything relating to Jason and my life together. When we finish the final touches to Cindy’s declutter, I am exhausted but cleansed of the rotten memories.
